title: Distance and the degamification of play author: Madison Scott-Clary description: “” revisions: [] created: 2020-12-14T13:15:43.525088537-08:00 modified: 2020-12-14T13:15:43.525088626-08:00
Distance and the degamification of play
A video essay about how distance of all sorts helps separate game from play
Pioneer 9
Start with some history about Pioneer 9, its genesis, and its end.
Lets talk about football
Hard pivot into talking about 17776/20020 via “Lets talk about football.”
What they are
17776
17776 is a work of interactive fiction by Jon Bois and Secret Base hosted on the sports news website SBNation. Following the awakening of the Pioneer 9 space probe to consciousness, it explores what it means to be immortal and bored on a level that I certainly have never seen in fiction before.
It is also about football.
20020
20020 is a piece of interactive fiction by Jon Bois and Secret base hosted on the sports news website SBNation. Like its predecessor, it explores the meaning - or paucity thereof - of an immortal life.
It is also about one 2217 year long game of college football.
Why they are
It is difficult to explain why something exists at the best of times, but doubly so when that thing is a piece of postmodern literature taking the form solely of conversations between space probes sixteen and eighteen thousand years in the future.
It’s probably worthwhile to put the works into the context of when they came about and who it was that created them.
On distance
Spatial distance
The three satellites and the their distance from Earth abstracting the game out of play
Ability distance
The further away from being a beginner one gets, the less it seems like play and more like work (alt title: the deplayification of gaming)
Temporal distance
The further one gets from the origin of a game, the less it feels like a game and the more it feels like a story.
Football has been around a long time by 17776 and even longer by 20020 (College ball has been going for 2217 years), and it feels less like a game and more like a story at this point; the longer a gam e runs, the more abstract the game portion of it feels.
From game to story
Becoming immortal
Enby icon Pioneer 9
Nick and Manny
“funniest part about it all is that Nick and Manny aren’t even tall that good at actual football” - JUICE